The failed second Waiheke Local Board will, as predicted, take the old Oneroa Bowling Club (OBC) building away from the community at next week's business meeting by giving a sole lease on the building to one of its favoured groups, probably the Waiheke Resources Trust. The Board had already pre-determined the outcome of its sham Hearings Panel by advertising for expressions of interest in a lease over the building.

Despite many community groups, including the Friends of Alison Park, submitting against this outcome, the Board’s decision was a foregone conclusion. The OBC building was an integral part of the Friends of Alison Park vision to make the park a wonderful gateway to Waiheke. That vision is now in tatters as Walden and his failed Board extend Green power and control over the island.

This Board has developed a model whereby it leases community buildings to its favoured organisations and then hands ratepayers money over to those groups to ‘manage’ the buildings.

It developed this model so that it could give control of the refurbished former library building to Waiheke Adult Literacy. Waiheke Adult Literacy is managed by, Fiona Gregory, partner of Chris Walker who controls Waiheke Radio. Waiheke Radio enjoys a community lease over the White House locking out all other community groups. Waiheke Radio pumps out propaganda for the local Green Party incumbent MP. Local Board member Shirin Brown also has a regular slot on the station.

Once in the hands of its client group, the Board then hands over ratepayers money in the form of management fees and other grants. There is no further transparency or accountability for the money.

And talking of wasting our money, the other big recipient of the Board’s largesse, Waiheke Adult Literacy (WAL), is to receive yet another $50,000 to add to the $30,000 it has already received to ‘manage’ the old library space. Another nice Christmas bonus from the ratepayers’ stocking. The $50,000 will be redirected from money previously allocated for work on the Onetangi Sports Park pavilion, which you may have noticed has ground to a halt through – well, lack of funding. WAL is the ‘gatekeeper’ organisation that controls what was long intended to be space for Arts related groups (eg. Community Art Gallery, Theatre, Cinema and Musical Museum) to extend their activities. Instead WAL is hogging the space for its own use, pays no rent, and returns no money to ratepayers in the form of rent, leases or fees. The $50k is for unspecified ‘improvements’, on top of the $150,000 this space cost ratepayers to set up just over a year ago. The new funding comes with less than a year to go to the next local body elections.​

​Assurances will be given that the favoured group must make the space available to other groups.

12. In particular, the management plan variation proposes a change to policy 9 which covered the proposal to lease to the former bowling club building. Following the hearing the board has suggested this policy be amended to read:

In reality, there will be an occasional ‘other’ group allowed to use the space for appearances sake, as WAL did recently by graciously ‘allowing’ an art display, but for 99% of the time the community will be locked out.Once the Board has inserted its client group into the building at the peppercorn rent of $1 a year, expect to see large sums of ratepayers money flowing into the client groups’ coffers just in time for the next local body elections.Once again this Board has locked the community out of use of facilities that have cost the ratepayer hundreds of thousands. The people of Waiheke need to take note of how this Board would run an independent Waiheke Council. Cronyism, favouritism will be the name of the game, just as it was in the bad old days of the Waiheke County Council.Watch this space for updates.

The Friends of Alison Park had the best proposal, and had done considerable work to do so. Fair to note the Friends of Alison Park mostly live around Alison Park and would like to see it developed as firstly a proper PARK, which it is. Their vision for usage of the building was in keeping with access to all in the community. It would have been a wonderful amenity for that neighborhood and something that would be well visited by tourists. How this bored can continue in their obvious deceiptful wasting march is beyond me. Wake up Waiheke and see how this Island could be, without the "special" interest groups taking all.

Reply

Roger Hutton

19/3/2016 09:10:35 pm

It also needs to be noted that the lease will be for 5 years with the right to extend this lease a further five years.

That equates to ten years of income from the ratepayer (approx $300,000 @ $30,000 per year) if the standard 'management' fee is applied and paid annually.

The ratepayer will get no return as the peppercorn rental that would no doubt be applied would probably return less than the interest that would accrue if the $300,000 was simply placed in the bank.

More importantly it will be money that will no longer be available for use on much needed improvements to Waiheke's infrastructure and in saying that I do not include bridle trails.

If you combine the two 'management' fees (OBC & Adult Literacy) and extend them out as an annual fee over the next ten years the Waiheke ratepayer will be paying out $600,000 due to the largesse of this local board.

As Dire Straits would suggest "It's money for nothing."

If WRT are awarded the lease then the obvious response would be to boycott WRT as an organisation and to not support any project undertaken under the WRT umbrella.